Thursday 12 August 2021

veruca salt

 

Released in cinemas in the United Kingdom on this day in 1971, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory starring Gene Wilder and Peter Ostrum was a commercial success, the box office taking in more than the film’s budget in its first run and was produced over the course of five months at the City of Mรผnchen gasworks in West Germany, costs at the time being significantly cheaper than elsewhere with the final sequence of the Wonkavator flying over the rooftops an aerial shot of Nรถrdlingen, the town built in an ancient meteor crater. The author of the original story, Roald Dahl, ultimately disowned the finished product with the over-emphasis on Wonka rather than Charlie and the addition of musical numbers outside the Oompa Loopa choruses, including Ach, so fromm from the romantic opera from Friedrich von Flotow’s Martha during the rather terrifying Wonkawash segment, appearing in Phantom of Opera, re-worked as a swing song, performed on the Disney short “The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met”.